About this sermon
Pilate presents the scourged Jesus in a crown of thorns and a purple robe: “Behold the man!” The chief priests demand crucifixion, first on a charge of insurrection and then of blasphemy, because he made himself the Son of God. Pilate grows more afraid, yet Jesus tells him he has no authority except what is given from above. To keep Caesar’s favor, Pilate hands over the true King of the Jews, at noon on the day of preparation for the Passover.
Sermon transcript
This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Gospel of John chapter 19, beginning with verse 1. Give your attention. May God bless these words to your hearing. Pilate then took Jesus and scourged him. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head, put a purple robe on him, and they began to come up to him and say, Hail, King of the Jews. give him slaps in the face.
Pilate came out again and said to them, behold, I am bringing him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in him. Jesus then came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, behold the man. So when the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out saying, crucify, crucify. Pilate said to him, take him yourselves and crucify him for I find no guilt in him. Jews answered him, we have a law and by that law he ought to die because he made himself out to be the son of God. Therefore, when Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.
And he entered into the praetorium again and said to Jesus, where are you from? Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, you do not speak to me, do you not know that I have authority to release you and I have authority to crucify you? Jesus answered, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above. For this reason, he who delivered me to you has the greater sin. As a result of this, Pilate made efforts to release him, but the Jews cried out, saying, if you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar.
Therefore, when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover. It was about the sixth hour, and he said to the Jews, behold your king. So they cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, we have no king but Caesar. So he then handed him over to them to be crucified. This is the word of God.
Let’s pray together. Our Father, as we consider Jesus Christ, his humiliation, might we, Lord, be ever mindful that these things of which we read occurred at just the right hour, according to plan, your divine plan, a plan that indeed, O God, brought to pass the great salvation that we know as our own. We pray, Father, that we would listen with spiritual ears, hearing and understanding those things that are herein contained. May we be found wise and faithful in this evil generation, shining forth as children of light, children of the day, who know and serve and love our King, even Jesus Christ. Bless now the reading, the preaching, the hearing of your word in our midst. You would be glorified in it. Grant power from above by the Spirit, we pray. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Since Pilate had decided that Jesus was not guilty of the sedition with which he had been charged, Pilate hoped that Jesus’ accusers would be content if he inflicted a lighter punishment. The infliction of any punishment on one who had been convicted of no crime was an act of injustice to be sure. but ordinary residents in the province, such as Jesus was, not a Roman citizen, did not enjoy the legal protection extended to Roman citizens. Pilate probably reckoned that Jesus had been indiscreet in his public utterances and needed to be taught a lesson. Here again, John’s narrative is in line with that of the Gospel of Luke, according to whom Pilate said to Jesus’ accusers, nothing deserving death has been done by him.
I will therefore chastise him and release him, Luke 23, verse 15 and following. The severest form of beating was not normally inflicted as a punishment by itself, but as a prelude to crucifixion or the like. Thus, in Mark’s passion narrative in chapter 15, verse 15, Jesus is sentenced to be scourged and crucified. This latter scourging was a murderous form of torture. Whips with which it was carried out were reinforced with sharp pieces of metal or bone, which left the victim’s body a bloody pulp. It’s not surprising that this treatment was sometimes in and of itself sufficient to cause a person’s death.
If the flogging of John 19.1 was designed to teach Jesus a lesson, it may have been less severe than that scourging, but any beating carried out by Roman soldiers was certainly brutal enough. When they had carried it out, they engaged in a bit of brutal sport, as you know, with their victim here.
His accusers had alleged he had claimed to be king of the Jews. And if so, let him be treated as a king then. So they dressed him up in a military cloak to serve as a royal robe. They placed a makeshift crown on his head and lined up to pay him a mock homage, each one giving him a blow on the face as he did so. The thorns of which the makeshift crown were plated were likely fierce and formidable, causing acute pain also in themselves.
The pilot evidently hoped that the sorry spectacle of a man so disabled and disfigured by a severe flogging and dressed up in such mockery would satisfy Jesus’ accusers that he had learned his lesson and was no longer likely to do any harm. The implication of Pilate’s words, then, behold, I am bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no guilt in him, was that in Pilate’s eyes, Jesus’ claims, such as they were, were more fit for ridicule than for serious legal action.
You know what he had said back in chapter 18. And thus Pilate’s words, behold the man, might mean, so far as Pilate’s intention was concerned, here he is, poor fellow. But the evangelist discerns a deeper meaning, a deeper significance. As John writes, that deeper significance is well conveyed by the words. For John, behold the man, is a way of saying here is the son of man. The messianic son of man. The word become flesh man. A real man. The incarnate word man. A man not disassociated from the first man. Here is the man who willingly and freely gives himself over, comes out of the garden, now being crowned with the symbol of the curse upon his head.
Not having his nakedness mercifully covered, but to be mockingly garbed in humiliation. Behold the man But the chief priest and their associates were in no mood to be pacified. The sight of Jesus dressed up as a pantomime king enraged them all the more. For in their mind, they were being exposed to ridicule even more than he.
When some years later, a king of the Jews, Agrippa the Elder, made a public procession through Alexandria and the Greek populace of the city parodied the occasion by dressing a local derelict up in royal robes and paying him homage in the gymnasium. It was not the instrument of their sport. It was not this derelict who took the offense, but the Jewish community and the Jewish king had such an insult. Well, here Jesus is an insult to the Jews. It’s not so much that he is the insulted one, but to them he is an insult and a scandal. How dare you present this man in such form to us? He’s not our king after all.
The Roman soldiers had expressed their contempt for the Jews by their treatment of Jesus. Here’s your king. Here is the way we treat this one who would dare claim to be your king. and the Jewish authorities thereby are all the more further exasperated.
They knew quite well what the outcome would be if Pilate found Jesus guilty of the charge, which they preferred against him. For a non-Roman, the penalty for treacherous and seditious activity was almost bound to be crucifixion. During the generation that had elapsed since the death of Herod, they had seen ample evidence of this time and again of men who would have been so put to death in Judea and the adjoining regions. The Jews knew what they were after, and this was the penalty they sought for Jesus. And now, having seen this one presented to them in this mock king’s clothing, They demanded the outcome outright. In saying, take him and crucify him yourselves, as they had pled for his crucifixion, Pilate, they perceive, is teasing them again.
He knew very well that they could execute no capital sentence against him, and even if they could, crucifixion was not a form of execution authorized by Jewish law. It appeared to Jesus’ accusers that their attempt to have him convicted and sentenced by Pilate on a charge of sedition, that is, of undermining authority, being a threat to the emperor and his underlings, was going to be unsuccessful. Therefore, they tried to gain their end by another route.
Governors of Judea not only had the duty of enforcing Roman law in the province, they also undertook the responsibility of respecting, and where necessary, enforcing Jewish religious law. The claim to be king of the Jews was a capital offense against Roman law. The claim to be son of God was a capital offense against Jewish law. But if the governor would not grant a capital conviction in respect to the threat to Roman authority, he might be persuaded, on the other hand, to permit the execution of the capital sentence required by Jewish law in respect of the alleged blasphemy from the mouth of Jesus.
A sentence which could not be carried out without the governor’s license, the apparent implication of chapter 18, verse 31. As they said, we are not in a position to execute in this way. The claim to be the Messiah could be construed both as a claim to be the king of the Jews and as a claim to be son of God. When the one formulation, which might have been expected to procure immediate conviction from Pilate, that is, an insurrectionist, a seditionist, seemed to fail in its purpose, the chief priests immediately try the other route.
And their language presupposes that a claim to be son of God was in and of itself blasphemous and rendered Jesus liable to the death penalty. according to Jewish law prescribed in Leviticus 24 verse 16, which says, Moreover, the one who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The alien as well as the native, when he blasphemes the name, shall be put to death. Quote Leviticus 24, 16. In the Old Testament, the anointed king of Israel was son of God by adoption. We might think of the language of Psalm 2.
Today, I have begotten thee. Call him son of God. As applicable to the anointing of kings, of course, it has a prophetic messianic meaning, and I’m not denying that, but there is an Old Testament usage where one might be called justifiably son of God. But our Lord’s contemporaries, the men who stood around him that day, recognized that much more than this official relationship of a legitimate son of David sitting on a legitimate throne was implied in the language that he used when he called himself the son sent by the Father from heaven. And to that extent, these Jews who found fault with Jesus, were in a sense right. They got the message. Jesus was staking his claim to be the very Son of God, the only begotten of the Father. That Jesus spoke of himself as the Son of the Father sent from heaven is true. He would not deny.
But this is the very thing that the Jews could not by any means accept. And if Pilate then would not send Jesus to the cross for sedition, for insurrection, he might agree to his execution for blasphemy. Pilate, however, rather than complying with their demand, is rather all the more heightened in his fear, we’re told. It was no blasphemy to a Greek or a Roman if a man claimed to be a son of God. If the claim was conceivably true, The man might just be a god-man of sorts. After all, there are some of those in Greek and Roman thought. Could it be so? No, not this man. Or maybe, or who knows? From the text, we perceive that Pilate feels some uneasiness now, and tried to cover it up by a display of authority.
Where are you from, he asks. going back into the praetorium to Jesus. And here we find in John’s gospel this one reference of the motif of Jesus’ silence before Pilate. A silence that is prominent in Mark’s gospel to be sure, but here in John’s gospel it finds expression only once, only at this point in John 19 verse 9, Jesus is silent and did not answer. What answer that he could have given would have meant anything to a pagan judge or conveyed any sense of what he had in mind when he spoke to others of having come forth from the Father. But Pilate is annoyed by Jesus’ silence.
In his mind it borders on contempt of court. Moreover, it is absolutely foolish to Pilate. After all, does Jesus not realize that he might arrange his release? Does Jesus not understand Pilate’s given power that he has to release or to crucify? But Jesus understands far better than Pilate. From a perspective Pilate cannot fathom. Jesus discerns behind Pilate’s discretionary power a higher authority than the emperor’s. The emperor himself, not to mention his local lieutenant, wields his authority only by the sovereign superintendents of God himself.
Verse 11, you would have no authority over me, Jesus says, unless it had been given to you from above. From above certainly here denotes heavenly derivation. God has placed you here is what Jesus is saying. Jesus is enunciating substantially the same principle that Paul does in Romans 13.
There is no authority except from God and those that exist have been ordained by God. For the well-being of men and their societies, God has ordained that certain authority be vested in certain officers, certain offices. And those who occupy such offices cannot avoid their responsibility to God, having been placed there by God in his providence. But even more profound in this hour is that in this hour that has been appointed from above, is the hour that has been appointed that Jesus Christ must drink the cup of sorrow and woe. And it must go according to that plan. For this reason, Jesus says, he who delivered me up to you has the greater sin.
Of whom does Jesus speak here? Judas? Not likely, although he definitely had a role. We say not likely, for his role seems to have ceased at the arrest in the garden, not directly involving Pilate. Therefore, more likely, Jesus refers here to the high priest or to the Jewish authorities as a collective whole.
Jesus is stating that his own people are inevitably more involved, more culpable in his death than is the Roman governor. who is being pressed now by the Jews to fulfill his given office. He had come to his own, and his own received him not. And they, in turn, have turned him over to the Roman governor. And if Pilate had found no substance in the charge of Jesus threatening Roman authority, he certainly had no mind then to take up the religious charge. And so he attempts then again to release Jesus, but he is again rebuffed by the children of the devil, bent on Jesus’ destruction.
They cry out, if you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar. Recognize this is no empty threat. Pilate’s military political power is in jeopardy here. Grant Jesus release and you will prove you are disloyal to Caesar.
The Jews knew how to play the trump card in that culture and society. What would be the emperor’s reaction, this rather flippant emperor, if it were reported to him that his governor in Judea had acquitted a man brought before him on a charge of insurrection, attested by many fine, upstanding religious leaders of the day? To save face then and to save his seat at the table, Pilate must judge and condemn Jesus, lest the ax fall on his own neck. How could he do otherwise?
We are told it was the sixth hour. At midday, high noon, on the day of preparation for the Passover, the Jews’ great high feast among their traditions, celebrating their great deliverance and their liberation out of Egypt. Rome’s governor here in Judea sits in his seat, having been trapped by the chief priest.
He sees no alternative to condemning Jesus to death, but he has his last little revenge on them by insisting that this blood-stained and disheveled figure is their king. He declares, behold your king. They will not, indeed they cannot see him as such. Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Their kingdom after all. is of this world. They will not have this one to be our king. This man is not our king. We have, they say, no king but Caesar. The story is all so familiar. The outcome is so well known.
But beloved hear the word of the gospel, meant for your instruction and your encouragement. Beloved, behold your king. This is gospel. The gospel writer sees and he hears. And what he sees and he hears, he testifies. Jesus is the true king of the true Israel. For all who believe, who know the truth and hear his voice and obey. Here is the man of God’s appointment. Here is the true Passover lamb. The lamb about to suffer his death at the appropriate hour. of the appropriate day for the life of his people. How interesting, on this day, it is Pilate who preaches the gospel.
Our Father, help us to see, to understand, to believe, to know full well that this was according to plan. A plan, oh God, that most certainly in its awesome design included the wicked deed of wicked men bent on the chief of wickedness. And yet there, O God, is the wisdom of God, and the grace of God may manifest. The lamb led to the slaughter, silent before his shearers, that one who had come down from heaven to give himself as a ransom for many. Whose kingdom is not of this world, the very Son of God, installed on Zion’s holy hill, against whom the nation’s rage, the Son of God, this day, exalted and lifted up.
At high noon, for all to see, and as many as would see, and hear, and believe, they would be saved. Our Father, we pray that you would humble us again, remind us again of these great and wonderful things accomplished in the face of wicked men who set their hearts on things of this world, whose power, whose desire for power in this world, the things of the politics of this world is their chief desire and delight. I contrast those who set their minds and their hearts on heavenly things, eternal things, and trusting themselves into the hands of Almighty God to whom vengeance belongs. Our Father, hear our prayers and thanks as we conclude this Lord’s Day together in Jesus’ name. Let’s sing together hymn number 214.
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